The Bach Experience
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Marsh Chapel at Boston University THE BACH EXPERIENCE Listeners’ Companion 2019|2020 placeholder THE BACH EXPERIENCE Listeners’ Companion 2019|2020 Notes by Brett Kostrzewski placeholder placeholder Contents Cantatas for the New Year v Law and Gospel in Martin Luther’s Theology vii September 29, 2019 Jesu, nun sei gepreiset BWV 41 1 November 10, 2019 Gottlob! nun geht das Jahr zu Ende BWV 28 5 February 9, 2020 Herr Gott, dich loben wir BWV 16 9 April 26, 2020 Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied BWV 190 13 placeholder placeholder Cantatas for the New Year Brett Kostrzewski In contemporary society, New Year’s Eve and Day occasion two familiar thought processes: reflection of the year that has passed, and hopes for the year to come. For practicing Christians, the New Year’s holiday remains inextricably linked with the feast of Christmas one week before. In fact, even in secular terms, our “holiday season” implies an association between Christmas and New Year’s—an association that can never be fully obscured as long as we rely upon the Gregorian calendar. The liturgical Christmas season traditionally lasts for two weeks; the first of January, when the calendar year changes, sits in the middle of this season. For Bach, that day commemorated the Circumcision of Jesus, upon which he formally received his name and entered the community of Jewish believers. It was an important feast; Bach would compose two cantatas beyond the two that were part of his complete cycles, in addition to the cantatas needed for the Sunday after Christmas itself. This year’s Bach Experience features four cantatas related to the New Year: three for New Year’s Day (the Feast of the Circumcision) and one for the Sunday after Christmas, which that year fell on 30 December and inevitably carried with it the connotation of the New Year. All four librettos—each composed by a different poet—focus especially on the theme of both praise and thanksgiving for the year that has past, as well as prayers for God’s protection in the year to come. In his seminal book The Cantatas of J.S. Bach (an essential reference for your author), the great scholar Alfred Dürr comments that the New Year’s cantatas do not focus on the Scripture readings that were assigned to these two liturgies. It is true that the Gospel for New Year’s Day—the literal telling of Jesus’ circumcision— does not factor at all into the librettos of any of these cantatas. But the assigned reading is a mere single verse, short enough to reproduce here (from the NIV): “On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived.” (Luke 2:21) But the Epistle to the Galatians, excerpts of which were also read on New Year’s Day and the Sunday after Christmas, point toward an equally important element of the Feast of the Circumcision—an element only more strongly accentuated by the changing of the calendar year that took place on 1 January (at least since the Gregorian calendar reform promulgated in 1582, although not adopted in Bach’s Germany until 1700). The entire Epistle was written by St. Paul to address the question of Gentile converts to Christianity and the application of the Mosaic Law—circumcision being one such question. As St. Paul wrote, and as Bach’s listeners would have heard on 1 January, “Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed….Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.” (Galatians 3:23, 25) Similarly, on the Sunday after Christmas: “So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are His child, God has made you also an heir.” (4:7) This dichotomy of v law and Gospel would be repurposed by Martin Luther in his rejection of the Roman Church (and Jews themselves, for that matter), adding another layer of significance to these lines for Bach and his congregation. It becomes clear from these readings that the focus of the Feast of the Circumcision and the week after Christmas is not the literal event of Christ’s naming, as important an event that was. Rather, it is the act of renewal effected by the naming: from slave to heir, from law to Gospel. The New Year becomes a symbol for the renewal effected upon all Christians since the Incarnation, made personal in their baptism. Returning to Dürr, I therefore disagree with his suggestion that the cantata texts avoid the sentiment of the relevant Scripture readings. All of them are directly concerned with the New Year—reflection on the old, anticipation of the new, ensconced in Christian faith and trust. August 2019 Boston Brett Kostrzewski is a Ph.D. candidate in historical musicology at Boston University, where he focuses primarily on the polyphony of Josquin des Prez and his contemporaries, under the advisement of Joshua Rifkin and Victor Coelho. In addition to the Bach Experience at Marsh Chapel, Kostrzewski has supplied notes for the Bach Akademie Charlotte, the Back Bay Chorale, the Boston University choral and instrumental ensembles, the Harvard-Radcliffe Choruses, the Boston Choral Ensemble, and others. He has also studied choral conducting at Boston University, under Drs. Ann Howard Jones and Scott Allen Jarrett. In addition to his work as a musicologist, he co-founded the vocal ensemble Sourcework, and currently serves as the Director of Music at St. Clement Eucharistic Shrine in Boston. He welcomes correspondence at [email protected]. vi Law and Gospel in Martin Luther’s Theology Dr. Jessica Chicka The distinction between Law and Gospel is the central issue of theology for Martin Luther. Luther’s theology differs from many theologians that preceded and followed him in that his theological claims did not focus on one central idea alone, but the dynamic active relationship which creates a dialectic between these two concepts. The law is that which binds humanity to one another and makes individuals subject to judgment while the gospel frees humanity from its bondage. The law orders and grounds the sinful human-ness of the person, while the gospel aspires to divine hope and love. The active determination between law and gospel is the ground upon which all of Luther’s theology is built, including justification by faith and the assertion of sola scriptura. The Christian exists within the tension created by these two antithetical, but complementary ideas—determining what is “Law” and what is “Gospel” and how they relate to one another. Law and Gospel are in a dialectical relationship, one informing the other to the point that neither can truly exist without the information of the other. It is the role of the Christian to continuously evaluate and re-evaluate the relationship between the law and the gospel in order to function in the world. This call is a difficult one to answer however, because the terms continuously change and/or are hidden from full comprehension. Laws are temporal, contextual, malleable to the human situation and never fully perfected; the Gospel is eternal, divine, and never fully conceivable. In his commentary on Galatians, Luther describes the relationship between the Law and Gospel in the life of the Christian: Therefore the Christian is divided this way into two times. To the extent that he is flesh, he is under the Law; to the extent that he is spirit, he is under the Gospel…the time of the Law is not forever; but it has an end, which is Christ. But the time of grace is forever; for Christ, having died once for all, will never die again (Rom. 6:9–10). He is eternal; therefore the time of grace is eternal also.1 Luther separates the Law and Gospel as time-dependent influences on the life of the individual, but his notion of time goes beyond a historical, linear understanding of the life of the person. The Gospel is ever-present and eternal; the Gospel always governs over people’s spiritual lives. The Law, conversely, is temporary in that it has an end point, but still affects the decisions and actions of the person in the material world. He describes 1 Martin Luther, “Chapter 3,” in Luther’s Works, edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, American ed., 26 Lectures on Galatians 1535, Chapters 1–4 (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1963), 342. vii the Law as external to, but still having an effect on the body, and the Gospel as internal, driving the conscience of the person. For Luther, humanity is caught between two realms—the earthly realm and the realm of God. Human experience is found in the intersecting space of these two realms. The difficulty of these realms is that they do not perfectly align with each other, nor are they completely separate. Luther recognizes a connection and tension between life as people experience it in this world and the eternal realm of God. Christians do not take on dual and separate relationships with God and the world, but rather these relationships are unified and come to define who they are. September 2019 Boston Dr. Jessica Chicka is the University Chaplain for International Students at Marsh Chapel, having previously served as the Chapel Associate for Lutheran Ministry. She is a life-long member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and is currently in-process as a candidate for Ordained Ministry in the New England Synod of the ELCA.